He
endured national humiliation, was forced into coercive measures from
which his soul revolted, and brought his country to the verge of
commercial ruin to avoid war. President Madison, during his first four
years, was made the tool of British diplomatic equivocation and the
plaything of Napoleonic strategy to maintain the position chosen nearly
two decades before; so great was the task and so fearful the cost of
founding a neutral nation.
This delay of war proved most fortunate in the end. Those twenty years
allowed the American merchantmen to increase in numbers until they
were able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the
course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire
the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of
settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable
to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years
carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close
that the Americans were able in the end to make surprisingly good terms
in the general European demand for a world-peace.
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